Zen and the Art of the UCV

I have to admit, I didn't expect my residency here in the Unsellable Condo in Vinings to be such a Zen experience.

To save costs, I moved only the minimum of furnishings here - a bed, a sofa, a dining table, some kitchenware, and a microwave.   A pair of computers - my laptop and my gaming computer.  No television, no stereo equipment.  It's pretty Spartan.

There's no cable or wifi here, but I can create a wifi hotspot with my iPhone.  It's pretty slow speed and it takes a lot of patience to watch streaming content on line, so I only do it sparingly.

There's not a lot to do here so I've been spending a lot of time doing nothing.  Sitting on the sofa.  Petting the cats (yeah, I moved them, too).  Preparing a meal, eating a meal, then washing the dishes after a meal.  After a while, doing nothing becomes doing something - the "nothing" becomes the "something" that I'm doing.

What I've found is that without all of the usual distractions, I've been more mindful and attentive to the little tasks.  Since all that I have to do is fold some laundry I've just washed, I find I'm doing it with complete concentration.  It's not just some pesky little chore I have to quickly complete before I get to the main thing I want to do - say, watch tv or play a video game or distract myself with my phone (or all of the above at the same time).  For the next 10 minutes, all I have to do is fold some underwear and t-shirts and put them on a shelf.  After that, it's just more staring into space or petting the cats.  There's no other task or distraction for my mind to wander to, so I do it with more concentration and attentiveness than I'm accustomed to.

Also, I bought this condo 21 years ago, and it's where I lived when I first started meditation and practice of Zen, so there's probably some resonant memories and remnant energy from that here.

I've been here for only three full days now, but it's already slowed me down, and I like that.